They're Trying To Sell the Brooklyn Bridge Again

They're Trying To Sell the Brooklyn Bridge Again

Refusing to buy The Wall Street Journal, I sometimes sneak a look at copies that are left behind by other people.

So it was last month when a friendly couple
dumped their paper on the train seat opposite me. And bingo, it was as
bad as ever. "Defense Officials Predict Slow Afghan Progress." And the
sourcing for this hardly unexpected headline? "Senior US military
officials", "military officials", "a senior US military official",
"Obama administration officials", "defence officials", "the senior
military official", "military leaders", "the official", "military
officials", "the officials", "many in the military", "military
officials" (again), "officials" (again), "military officials" (yet
again) and "officials" (yet again).

Why do our
scribes write this horseshit? My old mate Alexander Cockburn calls it
"selling the Brooklyn Bridge" and claims that Michael Gordon, chief
military correspondent of The New York Times, is always ready to buy it.
True. In 2002, Mike was banging the gong about aluminum tubes in Iraq
being part of Saddam's nuclear program. Then in 2007, "American
officials" – of course – briefed Mike on how Iran was providing Iraqi
insurgents with "explosive formed penetrators" for use against American
troops in Iraq; the fact that most of the insurgents killing US forces
there were Sunni and wouldn't have anything to do with Iran failed to
make it into Mike's story. Oh yes, and the Iranians were also supplying
their Hezbollah allies in Lebanon with the weapon to use against the
Israelis. Well at least the Hezbollah, who are Shia, are armed by Iran,
though we'll have to wait for the next Lebanon war to see if these
mysterious "penetrators" make their appearance.

The real problem, of course, is that we are sold
the Brooklyn Bridge over and over again. Now here's a good quote. "Iran
is the center of terrorism, fundamentalism and subversion and is in my
view more dangerous than Nazism, because Hitler did not possess a
nuclear bomb, where the Iranians are trying to perfect a nuclear
option." This prediction was not made by Benjamin Netanyahu but – and
thank God for Roger Cohen who spotted this particular Brooklyn Bridge –
by then prime minister Shimon Peres, now president of Israel, in 1996.
And four years earlier, the very same Peres predicted that Iran would
have a nuclear bomb by 1999.

In other words,
Iran – if Peres's preposterous statement was true – acquired a nuclear
bomb 11 years ago. By 2007, "American officials" said it would be
another six years before Iran acquired a bomb, and last year Israel said
it could take less than two years. So let's remember 2013. Or 2011. Or
1999 for all I care. It was, indeed, the very same Peres, who bleated
out this year that Hezbollah had acquired Scud missiles from Syria –
presumably fitted with a few of Mike's explosive formed penetrators – to
use against Israel. Now I rather think Hezbollah has a lot more
sophisticated weapons than these antiquated old Russian rockets that
Saddam used against Israel in the 1991 Gulf War; Hezbollah has been
playing around with pilotless drone aircraft and even sent one on a
trial flight over Israel – it returned safely to Lebanon. But Scuds?

Well,
of course, that was the story that caught fire. The Americans stepped
in with an oblique warning to Syria, even though there was not a grain
of evidence that the lumbering old Scuds had been trucked into Lebanon.
The Brooklyn Bridge was bought again. Then this very week, it was
Netanyahu's turn. "The security problem," quoth he, "is not just the new
(sic) rockets that will (sic) enter the area and will threaten city centers. I don't know if you know this, but today we are struggling to
fly near Gaza because they have anti-aircraft missiles there." Now Hamas
is so inefficient and corrupt that I doubt if it's found a way of
bringing such a weapon through the tunnels from Egypt, unless it's got
hold of some of the shoulder-fired rockets that proved so militarily
lamentable when the Palestinians tried to use them in 1982 over Beirut.

But
the Brooklyn Bridge was quickly bought again. The Associated Press
wrote from its Jerusalem bureau that Netanyahu's claim was "a
potentially game-changing development that could threaten the Israeli
air force's ability to strike at the Islamic militant group". Funny,
that. So why didn't Hamas use these wonder weapons in January of last
year when the Israelis were bashing the hell out of Gaza? Or why didn't
the Israelis find them when they occupied Gaza? But then again, why
didn't they find their missing soldier, Gilad Shalit, captured by Hamas
more than four years ago, when they smashed their way into Gaza?

But,
of course, it's not just the Americans and Israelis who sell us the
Brooklyn Bridge. When the outrageous Iranian president, visiting
southern Lebanon last week, told the Israelis their country was doomed –
Yasser Arafat used to sell this old bridge at almost the same spot in
southern Lebanon 33 years ago – the world's headlines trumpeted this
latest threat to Israel as if he had arrived in Beirut with one of his
famous nukes in his baggage. And bingo, Israel denounced Lebanon as "a
new center of regional terror". Then that went round the world too.
Having lived in Lebanon for 34 years, I remember the Israelis used
exactly the same phrase in 1978, 1981, 1982, 1993, 1996 and 2006. I
guess those danged Lebanese just go on rebuilding new centers of
regional terror every time Israel's enormously successful elite army
rampages over their land.

Any more Brooklyn
Bridges on the way? You bet there are. It is, after all, only a few
months since that great bridge-seller Daniel Pipes was advising the US
government in the Jerusalem Post under the headline: "How to save the
Obama presidency: Bomb Iran." I suppose, given such widespread domestic
opposition inside Iran, that some of the top man's retinue there might
switch it round: "How to save the Ahmadinejad presidency: Bomb Israel."
And our scribes would buy that bridge as well.

Further

Surrounded by a massive police presence, the country's top law enforcement official told a group of carefully screened students at Georgetown's Law School that, "In this great land, the government does not tell you what to think or what to say." In his speech, only announced the day before, Sessions went on to denounce uppity knee-taking football players and defend his boss' call, hours before, for them to be fired. We may need to upgrade the ole Irony Alert buzzer. It can't keep up.